Re: Long term database archival

Will postgresql be a viable database in 20 years? Will SQL be used
anywhere in 20 years? Are you sure 20 years is your ideal backup
duration?

Very few media even last 5 years. The good thing about open source and
open standards is that regardless of the answers to those questions,
there is no proprietary element to prevent you from accessing that
data- simply decide what it will be and update your backups along the
way. Whether such data will be relevant/ useful to anyone in 20 years
is a question you have to answer yourself. Good luck.

-M

On Jul 6, 2006, at 2:57 PM, Karl O. Pinc wrote:

> Hi,
>
> What is the best pg_dump format for long-term database
> archival?  That is, what format is most likely to
> be able to be restored into a future PostgreSQL
> cluster.
>
> Mostly, we're interested in dumps done with
> --data-only, and have preferred the
> default (-F c) format.  But this form is somewhat more
> opaque than a plain text SQL dump, which is bound
> to be supported forever "out of the box".
> Should we want to restore a 20 year old backup
> nobody's going to want to be messing around with
> decoding a "custom" format dump if it does not
> just load all by itself.
>
> Is the answer different if we're dumping the
> schema as well as the data?
>
> Thanks.

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AgentM
agentm@themactionfaction.com
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